Sticks and Stones
by AlexVMay
Summary: When Arthur's parents suddenly die, his brothers decide the best decision is to send him to a new school where he can learn how to be a kid again. But World Academy W comes with a lot more baggage than he asked for, and Arthur and those around him are about to discover that a lot of the time, words can really, really hurt... (High School AU)
1. Prologue

_Don't cry._

"I'm so sorry for your loss."

 _Don't cry._

"Thank you."

 _Don't cry._

"It's just devastating, isn't it?"

 _Don't cry._

"I miss them already, don't you?"

 _Don't cry._

"It's just not right, you know… the world can be so cruel sometimes."

 _Don't cry._

"Their poor children…"

 _Don't cry._

"What about your younger brother? Arthur, is it?"

 _Don't cry._

"How is he coping?"

 _Don't cry…_

"It's been… really rough on him."

 _DON'T. CRY._

Glancing over at his brothers standing at the edge of the crowd, then at the two fresh headstones buried under bouquet after bouquet of flowers, Arthur realised how little there was to lose, and let the first tears spill.


	2. Chapter 1

Unsurprisingly, sleep hadn't come easily for Arthur the night before. He'd tossed and turned for God knows how many hours, watching the furniture in his room slowly become absorbed into the darkness and the stars pass across the night sky outside the window. Then again, sleep had never been something that was tightly in his grip. He just had too much on his mind to ever get comfortable enough to drift off – the vast amount of homework alone was more than sufficient to keep him awake throughout the long and lonely night, as well as the many other things his school hammered into his head, like rusty nails that were sharp and painful going in and impossible to pull out. He hoped things would be better at this new school. Arthur wasn't entirely sure why he'd been sent to a different secondary school to his brothers for the first four years; whenever he questioned his parents out of curiosity, they always replied with 'because you had to learn to be independent' and no more was said on the matter. Now, four months after they'd passed away, he assumed he was being switched to his brothers' school because he'd learnt to get by on his own and look like less of a lost spirit. But he had never let go of his suspicion that this was not the case. His oldest brother Dylan, who'd been given custody of the other two, knew that their parent's death had been especially hard on Arthur, and wanted to send him to a public school so he could finally be a real teenager again.

 _'World Academy W'_. Arthur had always had a secret longing to attend a school with the word 'academy' in the title, purely because he felt it would sound fancy and sophisticated should the topic come up in a conversation. But this 'academy' was the strongest of contrasts compared with any of the others he'd attended. Sophistication seemed to be the last thing on every single student's mind.

Arthur stood in the crowded hallway, completely bewildered. When he was imagining what his first day at a new school would be like, this was about as far away from his mental picture as he was from Jupiter. It was like some sort of… _stampede_. Crowds of teenagers racing through the corridors, morphing into competitive and vicious lions who all seemed to be aiming for the kill on the same antelope. That antelope was Arthur Kirkland, who felt if he put his foot one millimetre off his path to class, he would be trampled completely. His attendance on the first day would become nothing but a myth, only remembered by the very small number of people who had witnessed his existence so far that morning.

"Excuse me? Could you please te-" he began, directing his sentence at a boy with ash blonde hair who was very tall, but the structure of his face implied they were around the same age. The boy completely ignored him and continued walking. Arthur started thinking that the academy's students were just incredibly rude and inconsiderate towards anyone new who entered their territory, but he then realised that maybe it was him who was wrong. His previous schools had all been as serious as the plague and intensely focused on getting acceptable grades and keeping a good reputation, with the students being no better than the faculty. The fact that Arthur hadn't made a single friend since he was four or five meant that he often blended in with everyone else. He'd been seeing things through the eyes of the kind of person he hated, the kind of person he didn't want to be, and maybe now things would change.

"Heads up!"

Arthur heard the shout and turned round halfway, only to be hit straight in the face by an American football shooting through the air at 50 miles an hour. He suddenly found himself staring up into the ceiling lights and seeing the other students keep moving past from his bug's eye view, slightly confused as to why nobody had stopped to look down at him or the hallway hadn't gone silent as it would have at his last school. Everyone was still walking right past without a single care that another - _definitely_ minor - student had been knocked down.

"Sorry, bro! I'm not sure I was even throwing that to anyone."

Arthur felt a shadow creep over his body and raised his head off the floor, seeing the face of a person suddenly appear in his now slightly blurred field of vision. It was a boy about the same age as him - dirty blonde hair falling in straight locks over both sides of his face and bright blue eyes that almost seemed to shine. And he was _smiling_ , showing all his teeth as he held out his hand to help Arthur up from the floor. Other than his parents, nobody had ever... smiled at him before. They had been the only people who could finally make him happy again after he came home from school every day, having constantly felt like a clean window as the students stared through him, as expressionless as they would have been at a funeral.

"Are you... okay? I didn't knock you out, did I?"

Upon hearing the concern in his voice, Arthur took hold of the boy's hand and he pulled him off the floor. He looked down and saw grey dust from the floor completely covering the back of his uniform and started to worry about people staring, but then realised that in this environment, nobody would be bothered about a few specks of dirt. The boy who had helped him up wasn't wearing a tie, the first two buttons on his shirt were pulled open and he had on a brown leather bomber jacket instead of the navy blue school blazer. As scruffy as he looked, he had a wide smile with bright white teeth like they were his only priority. Arthur wasn't used to interacting with someone like this and felt himself going red with both anger and humiliation.

"It was blatantly obvious I was standing right there! Can't you see at all?" Arthur asked him, beginning to wonder if this boy was mocking him or just being incredibly stupid.

"Not really... I got my glasses a couple of months ago but I don't like them. I think they put in the wrong lenses," he replied.

"Well, maybe you should get them fixed, or better still, actually put them on every now and then. Maybe then you won't go around trying to _decapitate_ people on the first day," Arthur said bitterly. He was trying to think of a way to get out of the conversion as soon as possible, since this person was taking the stereotype that people with glasses are instantly smarter and throwing it out the window. "I'm late as it is, I'll be going now, if you don't mind. Thank you for the nice concussion."

"Hey."

Just as he began walking away, the shout stopped him in his tracks. He turned around to see the boy putting on a pair of rectangular glasses before giving Arthur a wide grin.

"It's Alfred, by the way," he said through his smile.

"Arthur..." Arthur muttered in a poor excuse for a response, as Alfred flashed another grin and bounded down the hallway like a Shetland pony. Arthur wondered what on earth had just happened, lightly fingertip-touched the skin underneath his eye where he knew a bruise was forming, and finally moved in the direction he was _almost_ sure his last class was.

* * *

Mathematics was passing by too slowly, like a broken clock that was always ticking a few seconds behind; a subtle difference, but enough to make an impact. It was twenty minutes into the period and, instead of the textbook work they'd been set, 99% of the class was focusing their attention on who was dating who and what happened on Friday night and Lord knows what else. The other one percent sat right at the back in the corner with an empty seat next to him, doing his best to ignore the rest of the room and get on with his schoolwork, pulling his blonde hair further down over his face in hope that maybe nobody would notice he was there. He'd thought that more sociable and lively students would be a better change from what he was used to, but the harsh reality was that he was just uncomfortable.

"Does anyone know where Francis is today?" the teacher asked, turning around from her computer and seeming to notice the rambunctious class for the first time.

"I think I saw him sneak into a broom closet with that red-headed girl for a make-out session half an hour ago," someone said, somehow managing to be heard over the noise.

"Are you sure it was _just_ making out?" a boy called out from the other side of the room.

"And are you sure it was a girl?" somebody else shouted.

"Come on now, you can't say those sorts of things about another student," the teacher said as the entire class erupted into fits of laughter. "You're far too young to be thinking like that."

"Another year and nobody can stop us!" spoke out yet another student who Arthur had a bad feeling about already. He rolled his eyes behind his ragged bangs and tried to focus on the seventh equation; he was surprised he was that far into the book as it was, considering what was happening in the room outside of the bubble surrounding him.

There was suddenly a knock at the door. When it opened, Arthur craned his neck to see an obviously higher member of staff - maybe a counsellor or deputy head - showing a boy into the classroom. His eyes were a pale indigo-blue like the clouds streaking across a late evening sky, and he had very wavy, light blonde hair flowing down past his shoulders. He looked so different from any boy Arthur had seen before that he could easily have been mistaken for a girl from a distance.

"Mr Bonnefoy," the teacher said, sighing and shaking her head. " _So_ nice of you to finally show up to the lesson."

"I'm so sorry, it was me who called him into the office," the faculty member standing behind him in the doorway said. Arthur recognised her as the headmistress from when he'd visited the school before the summer. "We had a slight issue about the dress code."

"It's fine, it's fine, just sit down, Francis," the teacher said, sighing again and gesturing towards the rows of desks with her red pen. Every single seat in the room was taken - apart from the one next to Arthur.

He kept his head down and stared at the equations scrawled across the page as Francis walked down the gap between the two rows of desks and sat in the chair next to him. Maybe if he just stayed completely silent throughout the rest of the lesson and edged his seat as close to the wall as possible, he wouldn't have to struggle through another awkward conversation.

However, he hadn't been working for five minutes when he briefly glanced to the side, and noticed that Francis was staring at him.

"Why are you staring at me?" he asked him, the annoyance from the situation in the hallway and the layer of awkwardness that hung over his now shared desk like a damp cloth coming together and giving him a sudden burst of confidence.

"Because," was all Francis replied with.

"Because _what_?" Arthur pressed, determined not to be affected by this type of attitude.

"Well, you're not staring at me, so I suppose I should stare at you," Francis continued.

"Why on earth would I be staring at you?"

"When one takes this much pride in their appearance it should be taken in and respected by everyone whose eyes happen to wander." The way he spoke, particularly with his accent, made him appear as if he was quoting classic literature and not just being a pretentious snob.

Arthur rolled his eyes at his arrogance and stared down at the page of his textbook, trying to make it apparent to Francis that he was focusing on his work and didn't care for this kind of conversation to continue. His attempt to distract himself was doomed from the beginning, as it was obvious the French boy didn't intend to tear his eyes away any time soon.

"For God's sake," Arthur muttered under his breath. Not quietly enough.

"Am I bothering you?" asked Francis.

"Yes, you are, as a matter of fact," Arthur spat, whipping his head around to look him dead in the eye. "And if I were you I would shut up and shove my head into a textbook in the next ten seconds, unless you want to get on my bad side."

To his surprise and anger, Francis simply burst out laughing at Arthur's reply.

"Mon Cheri, I highly doubt that your 'bad side' goes any further up the scale than the level usually occupied by _houseflies_ ," he gasped, pretending to wipe a tear from his eye. Arthur began to wonder if he was one of the drama students since his reaction was so over the top and unnecessary.

"Watch it," Arthur said through gritted teeth, becoming more irritated with every word that came out of Francis' mouth.

"Watch what?" Francis laughed. "You trying and failing to intimidate me? Oh, you're adorable, I like you already."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Look at your little face and those big eyes! You look just like Bambi."

"I'm not cute! Get away from me!"

Arthur could feel his face heating up and he knew he'd gone red. Why was such a stupid remark making him feel so mortified? He concluded that if he met one more student who could make him feel this embarrassed in the space of ten minutes, he would ignore the judgement and snide remarks he would receive all over again, spend the next three years at his old school and hope to God that he crawled out of the graduation ceremony alive.

Arthur froze, and the escape plan forming in his head evaporated into thin air as he felt Francis lean in closer towards his ear.

"You know, I'm still not sure about your bad side, but… I'd love for you to get on my good side."

For the first time, Arthur couldn't think of anything to say or even raise his hand to slap the idiot across the face. He'd only attended World Academy W for a few hours so far, and even though he'd previously thought it was impossible, he had been completely broken inside and out.

It was going to be a long year.


End file.
